the rage at present. If one could trust to their details of every-day
life being correct, they might be useful as giving us the Americans
painted by themselves; but there is so much that is false and
improbable in plot and character, that one is tempted to doubt even the
cookery, of which we have QUANTUM SUFF."

"The conversation is the greatest twaddle I ever saw," said Mr.
Malcolm. "If the American people talk like that, how fatiguing it would
be to live among them! I could not write so badly, or such bad
English. I must take a successful English novel as my model."

"Mr. Malcolm is literary himself," said Miss Rennie, who had left the
two students to amuse each other, and now joined the more congenial
group. "He writes such clever things in magazines, Miss Melville, I
quite delight to come on anything of his, they are so amusing."

"Miss Rennie, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for your good opinion.
Then you like my style? Do you hear that, you ogre? Publishers, you
know, Miss Melville, are noted for living upon the bones of unfortunate
authors, and never saying grace either before or after the meal. This
Goth, this Vandal, this Jacob Tonson, has had the barbarity to find
fault with the last thing I put into the "Mag"."

"Well, I thought you had never done anything so good. It was so funny;
papa laughed till he shook the spectacles off his face, and then all
the children laughed too."

"Listen, thou devourer of innocents, thou fattener on my labour and
groans. My work was good, and my style better, fashionable as
Miss Rennie's flounces, and piquant as the sauce we will have from our